West Mac Spire - 9/1-3/2012

We were excited for a 3-day weekend with a solidly sunny forecast.  Plan A was for another objective in the Picket range, for which we spent all our time preparing.  Peter had the foresight of making a plan B, which involved a single line among the many email exchanges.  We met Zoe and Liang in Lynwood at 5a and were first to arrive at the Marblemount Ranger Station 30-min ahead of opening.  By the time ranger station opened at 7a, the line was 10 parties deep.  No permit was available for Triumph, said the ranger, two parties had gone in for Friday and Saturday.  We all paused, with the long lines behind us, we promptly switched gear to Plan B and got permit for 2 nights in the Terror Basin.  Off to the bunny place for breakfast and last min studying of the route to West Mac Spire.

The Pickets range is in the North Cascade National Park.  It is about 2-hour drive Northeast of Seattle - North of Highway 20 by the town of Newhalem. The Pickets range is made up very rigged mountain range with peak names such as Terror, Luna, Challenger, and Triumph.  although it is not far from the highway as the crow flies, there is no maintained trail into the area.  the approach into the pickets is a bit of an undertaking, steep climber trail overgrown with brush or down trees, definitely not for the faint of heart.  It is our second venture into the pickets, our first was to climb the Chopping Block (aka Pinnacle Peak)  almost 5 years ago.

Group Picture with our Objective.  West Mac Spire is behind Peter

Day 1 - TH to Camp

It was a quick drive from breakfast to the Goodell Creek Group Campground where our trip began.  We were happy to be leaving a full length climbing rope and two rock racks behind.  Our packs weight ranged 25-37lbs, much lighter than what we prep for in plan A.  The trip started with 4.5 miles on an old road which gained 1000 ft in elevation, we made quick work of it.  At the end of the road, there is a stream crossing, we all filled up with fresh cold water, in preparation for the 4000 ft up the climber trail.  The climber trail was straight up, the way I remembered it, and in good shape.  We stopped briefly for lunch.  Blueberries were ripe and distracted us from the march.  We emerged out of the 4,000 ft ascent after 3 hours with our hands stained blue.  We stopped at a big rock at the 5,200ft meadow which had a nice viewpoint of the pickets.  The sun was out so no jacket needed.  We all took our boots off and took an hour nap.

View of Mt Triumph and Mt Despair on our approach

From the nap spot, it is a traverse to a 6200ft pass.  The climber trail was harder to follow here, but we found it on and off and made our way to the notch.  The approach is very scenic once above the tree line.  From the notch, you can see the 5,700 ft meadow camp.  Getting down the snow slope was tricky.  The snow slope was vertical in the middle with a moat on the left as well as right side.  We checked both moat out and decided to go down in the moat on skier left.  Left foot on loose rock embedded in wet soil, right foot on the snow which was bulletproof solid. It was yuck!

We arrived at camp at 5:30p.  clouds covered the top of the Mac spires and southern picket range.  Other than the clouds clinging onto the mountain, it was blue sky and the breeze stopped when the sunset.

view of Chopping Block from our approach	Chopping Block at Sunset from Camp
Crux of the approach - a steep tricky down climb between solid ice and disintegrating rock	Southern Pickets range including West Mac Spire peeked out from the clouds at sunset

Day 2 - Summit day

There was another group of 4 camped by us and planned to leave at the crack of dawn.  We wanted to give them some space so we planned for a leisurely start in the morning.  We said goodbye and wished them a good trip up while we're still under our sleeping bag.  Weather was good but the peaks were in the clouds. We had a hot breakfast with coffee and left camp at 9a.  The slightly downward traverse brought us to the the lake outlet, where there were 3 tents, after an hour.  After the outlet crossing, we aimed upwards and enjoyed walking up the clean rock slaps for about 1,000ft elevation.  We put on crampons and harnesses when we reach the snow and made quick work up the snow slope.  We aimed to the highest snow finger towards the west ridge.  Clouds lifted as we ascent and we had clear view of the route, the West ridge and eventually the summit.  Getting off the snowfinger was no issue, there could potentially be moat issue later on in the season.  right off the snow was smooth rock slaps with lots of small loose rocks on them, it was a little nerve wracking to get on them.

We stashed our crampons and ice axes, and ascent up some dirty rocks.  we reached a 30 ft traverse that's exposed so we set up a quick hand line.  once pass that, rock turned into clean and solid slabs with glorious view around.  clouds has clear out and we can see all the way up the summit and down to the glacier and our camp.  Zoe and Liang picked up the pace once on the nice slab, we all enjoyed our way up to the summit.  it is 3rd class, tremendous view all the way down to the glacier (some call that exposure).  that's what make a classic climb.

seeing all the way back to camp from the summit	hand line

Day 3 

We had a leisurely start this morning, 5 min out of camp is the cruxy steep ramp up the notch.  we negotiated that quickly, reversing our path on our way in.  our hike out was very scenic, we had view of the Southern Pickets that we didn't see on day 1 due to clouds.

Bonus was washing up in Goodell Creek after reaching the trailhead.  it was 4pm and the sun was out, we all went in for a cold splash and thoroughly washed up. 

Mount Despair, Baker and the Chopping Block	View of Triumph along the way to west mac
Happily walking in Tevas on the way down to the river.	Ice cream at Cascadian Farm

Time:

Day 1 - 7 hours moving time + 1 hour nap

  9:30a TH

  11a end of old road 4.5 miles 1,600 ft elevation

  2p viewpoint at the top of 5,200ft meadow

  3p after an hour nap

  5:30 Camp 5,700ft Meadow

Day 2 - 7.5 hours moving time + 1:45 hour nap
  9a leave camp
  10a lake outlet 5,550ft
  12:45 summit
  2:30 leave summit after nap
  6:30 camp

Day 3 -~5:30 hours moving time
  9:55a leave camp
  10:35 top of snow ramp
  11:45 viewpoint 5,200ft meadow (day 1 napping rock)
  12:20 leave napping rock
  2p end of old road
  3:45 TH

Gear Notes:

60M 8.5mm rope (30m glacier rope would have been fine)

Crampons

Ice axe

Cordelette and double slings used for setting up handline

4-6 mid-size nuts would have been nice to have

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Thunder mountain lakes (9/15 - 9//16/2012)

Susan and me did a two day hike to Thunder Mountain Lakes with the intention of just spending a very relaxing wekend in the mountains.

Day 1 - Hiking in to the lakes

We wanted to set a good precedent for the trip by making it a slow and relaxing morning even at home. So we made sure we got a good night sleep the day before, slept in until after dawn, and had steel cut oatmeal for breakfast at home. And coffee. For the trip we were going to need something to read - and our upcoming vacation plan to Spain gave us the perfect opportunity to bring a guide book. Only problem was that we didn't own one yet, so we ended up waiting for the doors to open at Barnes and Noble in Northgate (9am), got our book, and were then on our way to the next stop - the Sultan Bakery for a second breakfast. However, this time we did not have a sit down breakfast but just a powder donut (Susan) and an apple cup (Peter). Tasty.

Were ended up at 11am by the Tunnel Creek Trailhead - this is the "hairpin" just before Stevens Pass - and we hiked up the first 1.5 miles through the forest to Hope Lake .

Hope Lake, the first of three lakes on our hike.

After Hope Lake, the PCT took us south 4 miles towards Trap Lake and Trap Pass, past many blueberry and huckleberry bushes. Being the PCT we also saw a steady stream of PCT (I.e. the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada) hikers coming the other direction. Their collective appearance can be described as, wearing sneakers, with a small lightweight backpack, PET water bottle stuck in a mesh pocket on the outside of the pack, somewhat fragrant, but mostly just happy.
Many berries later we found ourselves above Trap Lake, and soon at Trap pass where with rested with a lunch of tortillas, ham and cheese. Delicious.

From the pass, a boot path leads towards Thunder mountain lakes more or less along the ridge. It takes you through some forest and scrub cedar initially, but soon opens up in beautiful granite slab and heather terrain for the next mile towards the lakes. It seemed a bit longer than we expected, but the hiking was so pleasant.

View of Trap Lake from the trail.	Susan hiking along the heather up towards Thunder Mountain lakes.
View of Slippery Slab tower along the way.	Thunder Mountain Lake. Camping at this one.

Once at the lake, we quickly created and prioritized our todo list.

1. Dip in lake. (Cold but refreshing.)
2. Nap at comfortable, scenic and windless location. (We found a natural cut in the rock, by the lake outlet which fulfilled all criteria. )
3. Read. (Lonely Planet Spain and latest issue of National Geographic.)
4. Dine when hungry. (Turned out to be sunset and ramen)
5. Sleep. (Post sunset to post sunrise.)

Susan taking some pictures from our nap/dinner/sleep spot	So blue and inviting.
Coffee, book and sunset, with the sleeping bag over us.	Watching the sunset. Mount Stuart and The Cradle lit up.

From our nap/dinner/sleep spot we could see the smoke plume from one of many forest fires burning on the east sides of the mountains.

Forest fire by Cashmere mountain

Day 2 - Another lazy day

Sunrise turned out to be very hazy due to the wind changing from westerly to easterly and the smoke from the Cashmere fire obscuring most of the view. Mount Stuart which we could see clearly the day before was only the very faintest of a shadow on the horizon.
However, the priorities for the day were clear, although not as clearly prioritized as the previous day:

1. Have coffee
2. Enjoy sunrise
3. Read
4. Dip
5. Eat

Waking up and having coffee with a nice sunrise, though a bit hazy.	Reading by the lake in the morning.
Time for a dip.	Playing on the local rocks.

We stayed at the lake until noon and then hiked back with a few stops along the way for enjoying the berry-ing and lunching by the Hope Lake. 

Ptarmigan along the trail

What a relaxing trip!

Gunn Peak (9/8/2012)

This turned out to be Susan and my first single-day trip since 4th of July, so it felt a little bit strange to break the streak, but two solid months with a multiday trip every weekend will have to do!

So, a single day it was, and Susan, me, Radka and Zoe stopped at the Sultan Bakery for breakfast. Radka had not been so impressed with Sultan Bakery in the past - understandably since she's a vegetarian... Anyhow, we stopped there for breakfast, and Susan asks the quite lovely old lady behind the counter "what is good for a vegetarian?". Quite a comical silence ensued - and the whole thing ended up with Radka not having breakfast, Zoe having a sandwich with a lot of sausage, Susan having her regular breakfast sandwich with bacon, and I (slightly downsized this time) pancakes and eggs. I still maintain the pancakes are great!

Anyways, we were pretty soon done with the morning meal and we got back in the car for the short drive up to Barclay Creek and the side road after 4.2 miles that marks the TH. We had done our research beforehand, so we knew the first little bit may be difficult to follow. We had the requisite Summitpost map (very helpful), but really just ended up following orange flagging through the initial few hundred yards of brushy terrain. It would have been challenging to find the "trail" through the brush without the flagging, but with it there was not an issue.


So we soon found ourselves at the edge of the steep forest slog, and going uphill for a few thousand feet until hitting a clearing with a cliff at 4000'. The trail stayed pretty good all along. We then traversed right under the cliff with some exposed scrambly sections, past the (now dry) waterfall, and some more traversing more and more into brushy alder and fern terrain. Overall the trail stayed decent and there was no issue finding/following it.

Radka, climbing past the first seriously scrambly portion.

Susan, Radka and Zoe climbing down towards the dry waterfall.

Zoe, following the trail through the brush. 

Our next obstacle was the berry fields. OMG! So many blueberries - our hiking progress slowed to a crawl as one bush seemed better than the previous. The bushes were so tight we had to eat our way through them. However, we were definitely not alone enjoying these berries as there was tons of bear poop in the area, and later in the day on the way down we saw one of them happily browsing in a meadow below us. The next section up to the Gunn / Barclay divide is characterized by berry fields interspersed with ferns/alder and small cliffs. Overall very pleasant.

Looking east to Merchant Peak across berry pastures.

From the divide we realized we had to descend down right a bit to get past the rocky point in front of us. We found a snow filled narrow valley with a small lake at the bottom, complete with bear tracks in the snow leading to the lake. Thirsty bear apparently. Hopefully not hungry. From the lake we again descended a moderately steep meadow gully to the base of the talus slope covering Gunn's SW(?) side. 

Thirsty?

Hungry?

Happy.

The talus slope was all talus and no snow, but went pretty quickly. This took us to the "hidden gully", which looks improbable from far away, but turns out to be ok at least on the way up. Definitely 4th class though.

Gunn Peak with the talus field. the hidden gully is hidden.

Looking back on exposed north side ledge

Uneventful to the notch, and the north side traverse ledge was as promised very exposed. We set up a hand-line for safety and one by one went across. From there it was just a short little bit to the summit so we left the rope in place for the way back. The summit did not have any obvious napping spots, but we still managed to spend 2 hours there enjoying the view and having an extended lunch.

Hidden Gunn Lake

Zoe, Susan, me and Radka

Going down we just reversed the route, but chose to rappel the "hidden gully". We brought a 30 m rope which turned out to be perfect for it - anchoring from the lowest trees on top of the gully took us just past the exposed part with some loose 2/3-class in the gully itself. It was good to rappel.

After a few thousand feet back to the bottom of the forest we were once again on flat ground in the brushy part by the creek. Following the orange flagging back we realized you can cross the creek easily away from the big logjam this time of the year (right where the two branches of the creek come together). Doing this took directly to the end of the overgrown forest road and back to the car. To make us feel better, it just started drizzling a few drop just before we got back, ensuring us that we made the most out of the day.


Our original plan was to do Labyrinth Mountain the next day, and finding car camping wherever available. We found a spot (actually a day use area the camp host let us use) at the Beckler River campground. So we had a site right by the river, away from everyone else and enjoyed a good nights sleep. What good luck! In the morning I was up early, made some coffee and just sat by the river for an hour sipping the coffee before everyone else work up. So relaxing.

My knee wasn't feeling too good after I had bumped it into the rock the previous day so I could not hike for this day. Given that we all just had one car, the decision was to just hang out at our camp, enjoy the morning and then drove back to Seattle. What a great trip even if it was really one day shorter than planned! Thanks all for letting me wimp out :)

Beautiful tarns below the Barclay - Gunn divide.

Dumbell and Greenwood - Aug 18-19 2012

(posted out of order)

Susan and myself decided to scramble Dumbell and Greenwood mountains. These are both fairly high, and situated in the same area as Fortress, Mount Maude and Seven Fingered Jack.

Day 1 - A 2 x 2 x 2

It started as it always does, with the alarm clock (phone) waking us up too early, in this case sometime just past 4am. We made some coffee and were in the car shortly after en route to Phelps creek TH, via the town of Sultan. The Sultan Bakery opened at 6am, and we were there promptly at the strike of 6. The place was already filled with people, there was the locals table and miscellaneous hikers spread out in the other part of the restaurant. Susan ordered a breakfast sandwich, me a 2x2x2 and we had a seat at one of the empty tables. A sandwich, 2 pancakes 2 eggs and 1 strip of bacon (I just couldn't do it) and two full stomachs later , we were heading out towards the Phelps Creek TH.

The trailhead turns out to be very busy, with parking only a hundred yards or so away from the actual trailhead. The first six miles lead along a perfectly manicured trail to Spider Meadows where the views start opening up. We sat down and had some yogurt for lunch and while enjoying the scenery.

Heading out from our lunch spot across Spider medows

After lunch we proceeded along the trail for another few miles to upper Phelps basin, where the trail ends and it turns to a cross country scramble. We made a little mistake by heading up the forest too soon, (when we should have stayed on the bottom until the head of the valley) but soon was back on track and heading up towards the Dumbell next to some waterfalls. It opened up to beautiful heather covered ledges, and we decided to stop for camp just where the heather turns to consistent snow and rock. This way we still had running water, nice greenery to look at, and mountains across the valley. We thoroughly enjoyed the camp and had our regular noodle dinner, while watching the sun set.

Looking up from uppoer Phelps basin. Our camp is towards the upper right of the picture.	Enjoying the sunset from camp.
Setting sun

Day 2 - 2 summits

We started the day by heading up to Greenwood. We passed by the basin below Dumbell where we met some other climbers heading up towards that peak while we passed them to get to Greenwood.

The path to Greenwood follows a narrow ledge system, which looks scary at first. It is very exposed and really pretty narrow. Most of the time you can walk but at times it slopes down, and the rock wall pushes you out towards the edge, requiring you to crawl a bit.  It was fun, and soon took us to the saddle of Greenwood where a gentle ridge took us up to the summit. Time for a nap and lunch! There were some great views of Bonanza.

Traversing ledges towards Greenwood	Gentian
Summit views of Bonanza	Traversing ledges on the way back

After our obligatory nap, we headed back down to the saddle and back across the ledge system for a pursuit of Dumbell. Turns out it was quite a plesant scramble, but with an inital steep (and a bit loose) gully to take you up to the ridge crest. But again, soon we were on the summit again! A bit more bugs on this summit and a bit too warm, so we didn't stay quite as long as we did on the summit of Greenwood.

Steep gully heading up towards Dumbell

Summit!

View 120812 Dumbell and Greenwood mtn in a larger map